


Amazing Grace, Part Two

by itstonedme



Series: Amazing Grace [2]
Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: AU, Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-03
Updated: 2009-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itstonedme/pseuds/itstonedme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1930s Depression era AU in the southeastern U.S.   A migrant comes upon a teenage boy and his father living in rural Tennessee.  Originally posted on LJ in August 2009 <a href="http://itstonedme.livejournal.com/23181.html#cutid1">here</a> with readers comments.</p>
<p>Disclaimer: A work of fiction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amazing Grace, Part Two

On a normal day, Elijah would have tended the garden long before the day's heat had bleached the air. But this morning, they had driven into town. And after that, of course, had come the arrival of the stranger. 

It was under the rising arc of the late morning sun, therefore, that Elijah collected a hoe and fork from the tool shed and went into the garden. He worked the soil vigorously, harvesting earth worms for his bait can and pinching destructive bugs with his fingers. Even though Orlando was no more than fifty feet away, Elijah kept to himself, stealing glances from time to time and then berating himself for the rudeness he felt it to be. 

Orlando knew he was being watched, and it amused him that he was the object of interest for this quiet youth whose world probably spanned a forty mile radius, if that. But there was something there, something sobering that kept catching on Orlando's thoughts, drawing his eyes on occasion towards the boy. Elijah possessed a grace that spoke to Orlando, a quality that belied the rural poverty all around these parts. There was a sad and wise reserve about Elijah that made the four or five years between them less noticeable, less important. Innocent and unintentional, it was, to Orlando, an irresistible force that drew him to Elijah and made the youth someone he wanted to know better.

As for curiosity, it wasn't the first time Orlando had aroused it in this sprawling country, although most often he'd wished he hadn't. There were people to whom foreigners were sport, the proof being in the beatings and emptied pockets he'd had the misfortune to receive. If not for the whores along the eastern seaboard, whose hospitality was generous and not always bearing a price, Orlando's health and fortunes in America might not have been so favorable. In their company, he was able to heal and regain his footing, earning enough at the docks and markets to move on until the next setback laid him up. There was no urgency to Orlando's journey, only a constant forward motion. By his reckoning, he would get to where he was going when he got there.

He worked steadily at breaking the soil, heaving the heavy pickaxe as if he were splitting wood, protected from the sun by the shade of several towering black walnut trees. He paused only to drain his flask and strip to the waist to save his dirt-streaked shirt from further ruin. Searching through his backpack for another kerchief, he wiped his face and neck before wrapping it around his head to keep the hair out of his eyes.

It didn't take long for the overhead sun to parch the energy from Elijah. Soon enough, he pulled a few greens and young vegetables, then sighed and straightened up, stretching and squinting towards the sunlit sky. From the edges of his vision, he could see Orlando, and it took all of his power not to stare. Orlando was like a woodland creature to Elijah -- a wildcat, or a buck perhaps, gleaming in the speckling light -- sinewy, strong, the ideal of masculine. Orlando was everything Elijah wanted to be and everything he wasn't. 

"Maybe you should be thinking about pulling some fish for dinner, boy," his father said from where he stood quietly at the corner of the house. 

Elijah turned to him quickly, eyes wide and face flushing. "I will," he answered.

"That's good," the old man observed, fingers rolling a transparent paper around a thin bed of tobacco before he brought it to his mouth and licked along the gummed edge. "You never know how long it might take to get lucky." He brought the rolled cigarette to his lips and struck a match against the boarded wall, then turned and walked back from where he'd come.

Elijah collected his tools to return them to the shed, his heart racing. He quickly pumped water onto his hands, shaking them vigorously and drying them on his trousers before returning to the house. Inside, he found two clean worn towels in which to wrap some of the leftover skillet bread from breakfast. With his fishing line, bait tin and a pail of drinking water in hand, he returned down the path to where Orlando had the first two feet of dirt excavated. 

"Brought ya something to eat," he mumbled, placing the bucket and a wrapping of bread on the ground before continuing on toward the woods. 

*

The red earth was hard to break, just as Orlando had expected, filled with stones and a few roots that required an axe he'd fetched out of the tool shed on his own. By the time Elijah returned two hours later with a pair of catfish on a gill chain, he had dug a hole deep enough that Elijah took one look and figured it would last for the better part of the next decade. 

"That's a good size pit," Elijah commented, standing at the edge of the hole and looking into what seemed better suited for a burying than a sitdown. 

Orlando wiped his brow and drew from the bottle, studying Elijah. "I figured I'd build your dad a shitter fit for a king and his company." 

Elijah hoisted the fish and nodded, the chain jangling. "It's that alright." He turned towards Orlando, loose stones sliding into the hole as he stepped back from the edge. "There be a king where you come from?" 

"There is indeed," Orlando laughed, pleased with the question and opportunity to rest. "And a queen, and princes and princesses by the dozens. Too many, really, to keep up with, and all living the grand life. Show them that pick and shovel," and his chin jutted at the pair of tools lying on the ground, "and they would think them new bats for a fancy lawn game and wonder which end to hold in their soft white-gloved hands."

His words seemed to float on the air as if they were visible things, and Elijah found himself distracted by their sound and motion, and slow for their meaning to take root. When eventually he understood, he frowned, then smiled shyly. "You're joshing me."

Lines danced at the corners of Orlando's eyes. "I am at that. No offence taken, I hope." 

A blush crept into Elijah's cheeks and he laughed shakily. "I suppose I'd josh me too if I was you."

Now it was Orlando who frowned. "Well, there's laughing at and laughing with, mate, and I'd much rather share one _with_ you." _Because it doesn't look like you've had your share lately_ , he thought. 

"Yeah," Elijah agreed, looking away and worrying the fish on the chain. His mind was a mad scramble to come up with an iota of intelligent conversation, and his tongue felt like it had never uttered words in its existence. Heat burned in his cheeks. 

"So," Orlando said, after a beat. "Do we move the hut first, or clean the fish?"

Elijah looked at him, eyes so piercing behind his wire-framed glasses that Orlando's heart jammed for a moment. "Let me put these in water," Elijah said. "I won't be long." 

* 

It was late afternoon by the time Orlando, with Elijah's help, had unloosed and loaded the old outhouse onto a series of evenly-matched timber cuts and rolled it the distance to the new excavation. Once in place, it had been levelled and anchored, and both Elijah and Orlando took turns pissing in it by way of a christening. 

"My God, I must smell like that dung heap," Orlando observed after they had stored the tools back in the shed, nodding towards a pile of manure aging on the far side of the garden.

"There's a wash stand behind the barn, if you want to use it," Elijah said easily. His earlier shyness had been unable to withstand Orlando's warm and amusing candor during their labors, and Elijah's infrequent smiles eventually had given way to teeth-baring grins and an abandoned giggle that compelled Orlando to encourage it even more. Elijah hadn't felt such lightness, such comfort in another person's company for a long time; he reckoned it had to have been in his childhood, with his sister, back before. But right now, on this wilting dog day, with seed pods and heat bugs coloring the air, his life felt as if a new, exciting chapter was about to be read. "You'll need to pump your own water," he added. "I can bring you a piece of soap." 

Orlando shouldered his pack and picked up the bucket. "That would be good, mate, although before I leave here, you're going to have to show me where you swim. I could use a soaking. Where's your dad at, then?"

In a heartbeat, all of the moment's joy evaporated and the bottom dropped from Elijah's stomach at Orlando's talk of leaving. He cursed himelf for having been forgetful, for having hoped. He turned from Orlando and busied himself with securing the shed catch, swallowing and blinking hard. "He'd be tinkering in the barn, I figure," he said quietly, then walked to the back porch and into the house. 

Orlando watched the echo of the closed screen door as he rewound the conversation from every angle, puzzled, Elijah's abrupt departure hanging unquietly. 

*

The old man was pleased with what he saw when he and Orlando walked to the new outhouse. Not pleased enough, however, to offer a name or a handshake. Orlando's industry had frankly surprised him; the young man had looked too soft at first glance, and giving him a job no one had wanted in exchange for the spare fixings that two menfolk called a meal seemed like a good swap. It made the old man wonder if there might not be some use for the stranger yet.

As promised, Elijah -- reserved manner once more in place -- had left a shard of cracked soap for Orlando, who had filled a metal basin and, using one of his kerchiefs, washed himself from the waist up. He'd pumped fresh water and soaked his shirt and some balled-up underclothes, using the chip of cake to scrub at stains. When he was done, the clothes had been hung to dry on a line strung to a pole behind the house; Orlando hoped there was enough sun left in the day that they would dry by morning. 

Now dressed in a hand-pressed shirt rummaged from the bottom of his bag, he stood on the porch at the back door, wet hair combed back neatly, waves and curls already rising in the drying heat. Through the screen, he could see Elijah bent over to stoke a fire in the wood stove, efficiently snapping wood and nursing it to flame. Windows were few in an area that seemed to be where meals were taken and time spent, and it was hard to see much through the blackish mesh. But from what Orlando could tell, there didn't appear to be much of a woman's touch anywhere, none of the pretty things that decorate even the most basic homes, of which this dwelling, most surely, was one. He rapped on the door's wooden frame, not missing the small start it gave Elijah and feeling bad for that.

"Sorry to bother, I'm returning your soap," he said.

Elijah turned but made no move towards the door. "Keep it while you're here. You might need it in the morning."

Orlando nodded, hating the awkwardness. "Can I help you with anything?" he asked after a moment.

This was his father's house; Orlando's indoor welcome wasn't Elijah's to give. "No thanks." 

Orlando smiled thinly and turned away.

"But I 'preciate your offer," Elijah added hurriedly. "It's just there's nothing to do. And you, uh, you've done enough work already. I'm just waiting for the stove to fire up, that's all."

"Good, that's good," Orlando replied quickly, warmly, and despite the tarnished screen, Elijah wondered at the whiteness of Orlando's teeth, and once again, at the ease of his smile. 

The porch was a simple piece of raised boarding that ran perhaps six feet either side of the door, without rails, a short jump to the ground. Orlando sat on its edge, boots in the dirt, and watched his laundry billow while blow flies circled about in the haze of the western sun. He reached into his pack -- the lesson had long ago been learned that his worldly goods should always remain close at hand --and pulled from it a small but densely paged book, its covers arched and worn. Resting his elbows on his knees, book in hand, he began to read. 

The sun dropped lower in the sky, and soon the sounds from within the kitchen and further away in the barn, receded from his hearing.

"What are you reading?" Elijah asked a little later, through the screen.

Orlando jumped, so rapt had been his attention -- and his horror -- at the tales of people buried alive. 

Elijah chuckled at Orlando's reaction. "Gotcha back."

Orlando laughed and sat up. "Yes, you did." 

Elijah stepped out onto the deck, and Orlando gestured for him to sit.

"It's a collection of rather scary stories by an American writer, dead now, like half the people in his book. Name was Edgar Allan Poe." He flipped the worn cover so that Elijah, who had stepped down onto the ground and seated himself next to Orlando, could see it. "You ever hear of him?"

"I heard of him," Elijah nodded. 

"You read, Elijah?"

"Some," Elijah said without shame at the question. "Bible, mostly. That's the only book we got. Besides the pages in the outhouse," he added, grinning. 

Orlando nodded. "You finished school now?" 

"Yeah," Elijah laughed, and Orlando clearly heard the underlying bitterness as Elijah added, "I finished school when I was twelve." 

"I didn't get much past that myself," Orlando said. 

It pleased Elijah that this stranger and he might have something in common. "But I learned about Poe in school," he added. "He wrote a poem about a blackbird."

"He did," Orlando nodded. _"'Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.'"_ Orlando stopped, and turned to Elijah, smiling. 

Elijah sat wide-eyed staring back, images of a valley schoolhouse and Orlando's charm flooding his mind. "Do you know more?" he breathed.

Orlando folded the page to mark his place, and began to flip through the book. "It's in here somewhere," he said. "Perhaps after dinner you might like to read it?"

Elijah had become lost at how the sunlight cast long shadows through Orlando's lashes onto his cheeks, the near-invisible flecks of gold in Orlando's eyes. His face slowly coloured. "Might you," he started, then hesitated, because how could he say that what he really wanted was to listen to Orlando, to watch him read, to study how his lips shaped words and how emotion played across his face, that he only had one night to take all of this in, to learn him so that he could remember him and have something to reflect upon long after Orlando was gone. "Maybe you might...Would you, perhaps, be able to read it...out loud?"

Orlando smiled without hesitation. "I would enjoy that very much," he said. 

*

When dinner was served a short while later, Orlando took his where he sat, on a metal plate generously filled with fried fish, fried greens and corn bread dredged with drippings, and it was the finest meal he'd had in a long time. He felt no slight at being left to eat alone outdoors -- he was long past measuring affronts where logic suggested they might or might not exist -- and the weather was agreeable, the flies friendly. Elijah sat inside with his father, the evening darkness closing upon them, and few words passed between, none of which Orlando could discern. 

It was the old man who came to collect his plate and take it into the house before returning with a kitchen chair. He set it against the wall next to the wood box, then sat, pulling his tobacco pouch from his overalls pocket and rolling a cigarette. He held it out to Orlando, who politely declined. The man took a folding knife from another pocket and a piece of kindling from the box and, striking a match to his cigarette, he slowly and carefully began to whittle. 

"How quickly you need gitting to California?" he asked.

"I'm not rushing," Orlando replied.

Curls of wood grew between the old man's shoes. "There's nothing I can give you but food to take when you go and while you're here," he said. "But I could use you another day or so to help me haul some wood out of the forest." 

Orlando folded his hands from where they rested between his knees and watched as a few bats began to swoop in the twilight. "What would that involve, exactly?" he asked.

In the kitchen, the busy sound of plates being washed and shelved carried through the screen. The dog snuffled on the inside of the door, and pushed with his nose until the door catcher sprang open. 

"We'd need to bring a few trees down first, clean 'em, then harness up the mare. Pull 'em over by the fence." He indicated with the tilt of his head. 

"All right," Orlando nodded.

The old man set his knife and stripling down and plucked what remained of his cigarette from where it had been glued to his lower lip throughout their conversation. He flicked it past Orlando into the dirt.

"Need to split them after that."

A smile curled the edge of Orlando's mouth and he looked back over his shoulder at the old man. "I figured there'd be more to it than just bringing down a tree."

The old man looked at him sideways, then wheezed out a laugh. "Fair enough," he chuckled. Hands on his knees, he stood. "Morning'll be here soon enough. Think I'll go give the new biffy a try. Elijah'll show you where you'll sleep."

*

After dumping the dishwater, Elijah took up a pail of dinner scraps and a kerosene lamp, its mantle hissing, and showed Orlando to the small barn. They walked through to the fenced yard beyond where a small herd of pigs of various ages and sizes hurried over amid much snorting and squealing as Elijah emptied the pail on the ground. 

"You eat them?" Orlando asked while they watched the animals jostle and shove each other.

"Two will go in the next few months," Elijah said, turning towards the barn. "One for us, one for the butcher."

Orlando's wrist hung idly over the rail as he watched the animals feed. "'This little piggy went to market'," he murmured to no one. 

They returned to the barn, Elijah hanging the lamp on an overhead beam while Orlando surveyed the interior. It was a small structure, not much more than an animal shed really, but with open rafters upon which were nailed a few plywood sheets to form a loft. Four stalls stood empty, all but one cleaned down to packed dirt; everywhere else, the flooring was wood plank. A work bench stood just inside the doorway closest to the house, littered with soldering tools and assorted odd-sized pots and pans. A metal lathe stood nearby, its grindings collecting on the floor, and beside it, a small generator. The walls were decorated with harness leathers, ropes, chains and a variety of drive belts. Further back on wooden shelves, several cages of nesting hens brooded for the night; perched here and there along the stall rails roosted a few more chickens, which clucked quietly at the intrusion. 

Elijah snagged a straw bale and dragged it into one of the cleaned out stalls. He pulled a knife from his pocket and cut into it. "You wanna grab a blanket from the mare's stall, you can lay it on this for sleeping. It's not musty or nothing. No ticks."

For a moment, Orlando was overwhelmed with a melancholy so sudden and sharp that tears started in his eyes. He could not really understand why; there was nothing about Elijah's tone or his surroundings or the prospect of the morrow that should have triggered such a wave of sadness. His billet was fine; there had been many far less comfortable lodgings in recent months. It might have been a loneliness now that he was back among people after too many days without; it might have been that in the presence of this sensitive young man, he felt a grief that someone this young and seemingly good should be doomed to such poverty and lack of promise. But as suddenly as this desolate feeling arrived, it vanished when Elijah turned to him, having heard no reply.

If Elijah was surprised by the shadows and glitter in Orlando's eyes -- and he was truly shocked -- he gave no sign. "I can't keep the lamp burning out here too long. You're staying on a day, I heard. Maybe we might read that poem tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow would be fine," Orlando smiled, although he regretted the prospect lost. He shook out the old hand-sewn quilt and lay it upon the scattered bedding. 

Elijah felt awkward. "I'll be closing the barn doors to keep the varmints out. Mind the rooster in the morning; he can be a bit nasty if you cross him."

Orlando dropped his pack in the corner. "Good night, Elijah," he said. "And thank you. For today."

The shadows grew long as Elijah took the light with him. Orlando reached for his sack and pulled from it a light jacket for his pillow and a harmonica. Settling his back against the wall, he brought the harp to his mouth and in the dark, with the crickets as his chorus, he began to blow a quiet tune, plaintive only by virtue of the instrument from which it came. But it was musical and pretty, and it brought him calm and reflection. 

Elijah stopped at the back porch and set the lamp upon it. He listened for a moment, catching the tune faintly, curiously, and he slipped in the dark back to nearest wall of the barn, resting his head and one shoulder against it while he listened. He was still there, eyes closed and his thoughts a thousand miles away, when his father came up the path from the outhouse a little while later and stepped onto the back porch. 

"Elijah?" he called out.

Elijah sighed and straightened, and walked out of the darkness towards the old man. "Just taking a piss," he said, picking up the lamp by its handle and following his father into the house. 

*

It was the heart of the night, and Elijah's sleep had been shallow and fitful, woven with dreams that had been more waking than not, dreams that had drawn him repeatedly back to the barn, to the dark-haired figure on the fodder pallet. More than a quarter hour had passed since he had awakened to hear his father in the next room emptying his bladder into a can he kept by the bed. The house was now quiet, except for the odd scurry along an outside wall.

Elijah turned his face into the pillow to wipe away the tears that streaked it, his fist tightening its grip on his spent cock to the point of pain. His anguish and misery were all-consuming, his shame nearly suffocating as he dwelt on having brought himself to completion from images of the stranger: Orlando stripped to the waist upon a bed of straw, Orlando -- eyes bright and sad -- reaching out towards Elijah with one hand while the other stroked himself to hardness. Elijah knew that this was why God saw fit for his life to have taken the path it had, virtually hidden from society in a rundown shack, miles from nowhere, never to go beyond. In his heart, he knew that this was why he was a pathetic runt, half-blind, without schooling or trade, without friends, with no other family than a bitter old man whose silence and hardness chipped away so that Elijah might be shaped into something that would in time be just as bitter and broken. This was Elijah's punishment for having defied -- and defiled -- what was right and natural, for keeping sinful, indecent thoughts of carnal union with his own kind. He wept wretchedly in silence. 

It was a long and terrible night for Elijah, and the sorrow of it was that it was only one of many that had come before.


End file.
